One Florida Republican is seeking to expose whether foreign governments could be paying America’s biggest political influencers to push agendas and upend the country’s discourse.
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) has introduced the Foreign Propaganda Registration Act, a proposed amendment to the Foreign Agents Registration Act that would require influencers to disclose when they are being paid by foreign governments to push political messaging, according to Politico’s Playbook.
“Being an influencer right now is kind of like the wild west,” Luna told Playbook. “There’s a lot of things laws haven’t caught up to.”
Enacted in 1938, the Foreign Agents Registration Act requires people and organizations working on behalf of foreign governments or other foreign entities to disclose their relationships and political activities. Luna’s proposal would update the law for the social media age by requiring online political influencers to disclose when foreign governments are paying them to push political narratives.
The MAGA firebrand told Politico that she has received briefings about foreign influence operations and “dark money” allegedly flowing to influencers “on the back end.”
“I have a number of those people,” Luna said, referring to specific influencers, without naming names. “I’m not going to put anyone on blast. That’s not my job.”
“Some of your biggest profile names … a large portion of them, in some way, shape, or form, have been approached at one point to push a certain position that’s probably tied to a foreign country,” Luna told the outlet. “I’ve seen contracts into the millions.”
Luna expects House GOP leadership, including Speaker Mike Johnson, to back the measure. The legislation has also drawn support from Democrats, including Reps. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) and Vicente Gonzalez (D-TX).
The push comes as concerns grow over the potential for foreign actors to use the influencer economy to shape American political discourse, and one month after Luna forcefully denied a Wall Street Journal report alleging she tipped off a MAGA influencer about President Donald Trump’s vice presidential pick during the 2024 cycle.
At an exclusive social club in Tampa, Luna allegedly passed the information to Rogan O’Handley, the popular Right-wing influencer known as “DC Draino,” so that he could make money betting on Polymarket, the Journal reported at the time.
According to the outlet, O’Handley told associates he had led a long-shot social media campaign to persuade Trump to choose Luna as his running mate. After Luna allegedly told O’Handley that JD Vance would get the nod, he placed a winning bet on Polymarket.
Luna herself refuted the accusations as “false,” and a spokesperson previously denied that she ever had definitive knowledge of Trump’s vice presidential pick. The Department of Justice has never investigated the congresswoman for insider trading, according to Axios.
Curbing foreign influence in the influencer economy, however, has been a top priority for the Florida Republican, who has also pushed to ban congressional insider trading and impose term limits on lawmakers. It remains unclear whether the amendment can muster enough support to pass a divided Congress in an election year, but the proposal has already earned the backing of at least one key Trump ally.
“If you get paid to promote a swimsuit, you have to say ‘paid partnership.’ If you get paid to tell the president to pull tariffs off of India, you don’t have to disclose,” Alex Bruesewitz, a political consultant and Trump adviser, told Playbook. “The American public deserves to know what content that is going out on the accounts of their favorite social media personalities is bought and paid for by foreign interests.”
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